


Heat Jump

by alyseofwonderland (Esyla), Esyla



Series: Speirs/Roe Rare Pair OTP [4]
Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: A/B/O, Alternate Universe - Space, Alternate Universe - Star Trek Fusion, Army Bureaucracy, Genetic Engineering, M/M, Pon Farr, alternative universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-20
Updated: 2017-06-20
Packaged: 2018-11-16 14:53:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11255235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Esyla/pseuds/alyseofwonderland, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Esyla/pseuds/Esyla
Summary: The Army has the following rules about having a sexual relationship while deployed:1.Please, pretty please with sprinkles on top, don’t.2.If you find that you cannot follow the first instructions then: Do not have sex in zero G. Don’t do it. You will get written up if you even suggest it as an idea to a recruit.3.If you have a sexual relationship with a member of your unit, please make it not your direct superior officer for the love of all that is holy.4.If you find that you HAVE to have a sexual relationship with your direct superior officer you will be forced to fill out five times the paper work.





	Heat Jump

**Author's Note:**

> This idea came to me because I watched Band of Brothers and then I watched an episode of Star Trek while reading an A/B/O Teen Wolf fic. 
> 
> The A/B/O dynamics in this are nothing like the teen wolf fandom. 
> 
> It’s much closer to Pon Farr rules, but not because I didn’t want anyone to be Vulcan. (realizes as she is writing this that she has missed a huge opportunity. Oh my god Nina! I’ve made a huge mistake! I am going to have to write another one aren't I?) You do not need to know anything about Star Trek for this to make sense. Just know we are in space. 
> 
> If you do know Star Trek, I took out a lot of things to make it more desperate and in tone with the original series. You could see this more as prequel to Star Trek. (Remember in the Khan episode how they talked about the past where everyone was genetically engineered? BECAUSE I DO!)
> 
> CRISPER is a real thing people. It is going to save lives and change the world. [ Watch a really cool video about CRISPER HERE. ](https://youtu.be/jAhjPd4uNFY)
> 
> You might be sitting here asking me: “Why are there no women in this story if it’s THE FUTURE?” To which my answer is  
> *singing in John Ralph voice* I’mmmm noooOOOOtttt gonna write OOOOOCCCCCCsssss  
> *mic drop*

His feet touched the floor just as the alarm that alerts them of returning gravity blared, waking him up. Gene takes a few minutes to really try and remember which way is up before he gets himself out of his sleeping bag. Returning to gravity after a week in zero g is always disconcerting for a few seconds.

Around Gene the other men are waking up similarly, suddenly standing when moments before they had been weightless and asleep.

“Looks like we are reaching our drop planet if they have finally taken us out of FTL engines.” Grant groans, struggling out of his own sleeping bag next to Gene.

“Showers!” Someone calls at the hatch doors. “Gravity showers for the next hour!” That gets everyone moving. Gene finally pulls himself out of his bag and joins the line of men heading for the shower room on this deck.

His brain hasn’t really come back online fully from sleep so Gene barely registers the beginnings of stripping and waiting in line until it’s his turn. He takes a step forward and sleepily walks right into someone.

“Pardon me.” Gene offers attempting to suppress a yawn. Of course Gene has the bad luck of having walked directly into HIM.

Ronald Speirs, the most attractive man in the 101st airborne.

“Doc Roe.” Speirs says with a neutral expression and blank eyes. He is freshly showered and exiting the room in nothing but a towel to return to his room for his uniform. Speirs’ wet hair is plastered to his head and he looks impossibly good.

“Sorry sir.” Gene replies because officers should always be addressed with sir. It what his sleep deprived brain is focused on right now. Not the fact that they are both nearly naked in a room filled with naked men.

“Not at all.” Speirs responds levelly. Gene knows what a silent laugh looks like. Speirs blank face doesn’t hide the laughter in his eyes. Speirs walks off without a backward glance and the man behind Roe nudges him impatiently.

He goes to his shower and prays that this jump turns out better than his morning is going so far.

<~>

At breakfast, seated at real tables for the first time in two weeks, the men gossip. It is the army so there is a never ending stream of shit to talk about. Gene sits and inhales his food in semi silence because listening is actually more fun than participating.

“What are they talking about? If who corners us?”

Gene catches the end of some particular teasing towards one of the new guys. The group a table over is giving their newest replacement a talking to.

“Speirs, lieutenant Speirs.”

Someone clarifies. Maybe Christensen.

“What about him?” The new kid asks with confusion clearly on his face.

“His parents opted out of the final CRISPER adjustment, or so they say.”

Oh this.

“What? He's an unaltered Alpha?”

Gene hates how much the men talk about this type of thing while on transport. Fine they are all trapped on a ship for weeks at a time with only the standard holos to read and maybe a larger holo in the rec room when they are lucky and there isn't much for them to do. So they talk about each other and play cards and gamble and talk about who they think has altered eye color and who got their nose the old fashioned way and who’s parents paid for it. Eventually this talk turns to the topic of alphas and omegas. Who’s an alpha? Who can still use group control and pack leader techniques and who can’t? Who’s an omega? Who can still calm a room with a mental push?

“As unaltered as any of us can be in this day and age.”

“Wouldn't that mean he still has heats?”

It was only because Roe was looking up at that exact moment that he caught Lieutenant Speirs making purposeful strides toward the table in question. He was holding a holo board and making notations as he walked.

“Christensen.” Speirs calls out nearing the table.

“Lieutenant Speirs, sir.” Christensen’s face looks stricken, unsure if his earlier comments had been heard.

“We have a hot jump in twelve hundred. Make sure your guns are ready for drop.” Speirs absently marks something with his finger on his holo.

“Yes sir.” Christensen replies evenly. Still something of the earlier conversation or the tension at the table has to be evident to Speirs because he looks up from his holo and smiles at the men. It’s not actually a smile. It looks like he is baring his teeth, made more terrifying by the blankness in his eyes.

Gene tries very hard not to snort with laughter at the sight of an entire table of men frozen in fear. He coughs. Speirs looks up and for a heartbeat their eyes meet before Speirs turns and marches off to the next heavy gunner on his list.

“Jesus Christ.” Someone at the table exclaims softly. Gene couldn’t agree more.

“He punched me in the face once. It was awesome.”

“George, what have we said about quoting that old movie at breakfast?” There is a thunk of someone being smacked.

“He did! During hand to hand combat training!”

“No one is buying it Luz!”

<~>  


With humanity at war in space it was important now more than ever for every person to be altered. Or at least that's what all the posters said. The war with the Nazz’Easee was ramping up. Planets bring snatched up from human colonies all over this quadrant of the galaxy. 

No one needed an alpha going into heat in the middle of battle. Or an omega calming an army in the middle of an attack. And absolutely no one wanted a bonded pair on a space ship or remote planet. Not that a bonded pair weren’t powerful but the army couldn’t control them. What kind of orders would over ride the psychic connection to your other half? None.

Most people were altered anyway these days. The invention of the CRISPER meant that most birth defects and fatal genetic diseases were gone from the population. The next thing to go had been the more extreme effects of alphas and omegas. Insurance companies covered even more alterations. The airborne required every applicant to get additional alterations, remove a wide range of possible allergic reactions to their main medications.

The genetic pool was already altered beyond recognition. Ron’s parents hadn't seen the point in any additional alterations when he was conceived. He got to pay for that decision. 

His alpha traits hadn't had the additional toning down that his fellow officers had received. He was faster at the trigger, easier to anger, more likely to kill than maim an opponent. During a fight his pain response was next to nil.

He had read once in school about alphas before alterations the part of their brains that allowed them see the the consequences of their actions was under developed. Ron didn’t need a brain scan to know his was probably borderline.

In the grand scheme of a war this size it might not be that relevant. But up next to an officer like Winters it was easy to see that the CRISPER alterations could make all the difference in the world. 

<~>  


“Alright men this is a hot jump. The K’wauts have anti-aircraft and sub space guns. We are going to be entering at outer atmosphere. So I don't want to see any shoots open before we are close enough to spot landmarks.” Lipton turns back to holo displaying their drop zone and the planet.

It’s another M class planet with the added benefit of being the only M class in that sector. Not to mention the other planets in the system that are rich with minerals and ore. Control of this planet means control of the sector.

Earth Allied Forces have given strict orders not to let the planet fall to the Nazz’Easee Empire no matter what.

“We are getting an amo and supply drop but it’s going to be small. The army claims to have left a lot of supplies before they had to move out to Delta Station three days ago.”

The men were not excited about it. Sure the planet was an M class but it was also in the middle of its planet wide winter. Carwood was not certain on how exactly that worked out, he didn’t go to space as a planetary engineer or terraform expert. He went as a member of the Airborne.

“The central continent has much the same look as the Temperate zone on Earth. All of the other land structures are too small to support rocket launch so we are going to hold the north sector,” Lip pointed to a large area of land, “above the flat lands.”

“Where are the K’wauts?” Someone asks, sounds like Alley.

“On the other side of the peninsula,” Nixon points to the second largest landmass. “The probe we sent ahead shows they have about twice the fire power they did when the army held this position. We think they got a supply drop while the planet was on comms balk out during its pass through the moon field.”

The holo zoomed out to show the sheer number of moons orbiting the planet. It would make satellite comms near impossible. The satellite would have to orbit farther out meaning they would have comms black outs every day or so for hours at a time.

“The good news is we have structures.” Nixon offered to the men who perked up at the concept of shelter. “Army worked hard to get some expanded buildings in place before they pulled out. The K’wauts also had time to put up some structures when the first landed.” The holo now displayed a series of three locations with buildings. “Outpost Gama has been ear marked for aid station. CP will be located at outpost Delta.”

“Due to the satellite issues we are going to be passing out hard copies of the maps. You will have back up Intel on your comms but do not rely on those.” Winters stood and began passing out the squares of maps to each man.

A loud tone rang out through the room. The ship was approaching the drop planet.

 “Alright men, gear up!” Lip shouted and then dismissed everyone to their equipment racks and drop shuttles.

Jumping from orbit was not the same as jumping from atmosphere. It was about eight times more dangerous. On top of that they had Dike as their commanding officer. He was a third son of someone important on Earth and they wanted him to have enough combat experience to be promoted out of the Airborne in six months. The only unit that saw enough combat was Easy.

“Lip!” Called out Doc as the meeting broke up. “I need the extra jump pack.” Carwood sighed and nodded. Doc jumping with extra medical supplies was more dangerous than him jumping in just his suit, but this was not going to be a bloodless drop everyone knew that. Just in case, Carwood made sure to request an additional medical pack in the supply drop. The planet had edible fauna but none with medical applications. If they got stuck there it would be more important to have the med kit.

“Just make sure you and the other medics are on separate drop ships.” Lip reminds the doctor. Roe nods and heads off to the hangers for his jump suit and drop ship.

<~>

“Hey fellas!” Webster greeted. The men loading up for the second drop ship turned and looked at him with a variety of facial expressions. Jackson seemed neutral. Malarkey gave him disbelieving look. McClung flipped him off.

“Web, the fuck you doing at drop ship two?” Joe Liebgott quips.

“I got reassigned.” Webster offered. He had taken a hit two jumps ago and missed the last drop. He had spent the trip here rooming in the first platoon bunking deck. Until someone had finally run a personnel count and realized they had put all the drop ship pilots in second platoon’s bunking room.

“Bully for you.” Joe sucked his teeth and went back to strapping on his hot jump evac suit. Webster followed him up to equipment rack and started suiting up as well.

Webster knew he didn’t have a best friend in the company. He saw it all over, the way certain guys had favorite friends. Most of them had established set groups back on Toccoa. The only person who ever seemed to put up with him, verbal abuse or not, was Joseph Liebgott.

Granted Liebgott’s best friend was probably Dukeman but if Webster was completely alone in a crowd Joe would at least make eye contact and give him a little head nod. It was nice, feeling like someone sought out his company.

David Webster was aware that  he was odd for an Omega. The old stereotype of an omega who was liked by everyone did not apply to him. His parents had worried they had gone too far with his alterations when he was young. He remembered all the tests and scans. In the end he was cleared a perfectly healthy and functional omega. It was just that he didn’t have the connection to the part of him that could do those typical omega things.

People didn’t instantly like or trust him. No one considered David Webster to be a calming presence. Not like Doc Roe.

David had spent some time in the medic’s tent two drops ago watching Doc Roe work. It was like watching magic happen. The small Cajun had a real Omega’s touch. Bleeding men calmed and stilled below his hands. The one time Doc had gotten angry David had watched every Alpha in the room got tense like they were being personally scolded.

For the most part none of this really bothered David. He didn’t care so much that he was such an outsider. It didn’t really bother him that he wasn’t fawned over the way his sister was with her proper omega talents.

He had other things to think about, more important things. Like getting in a jump suit and dropping out a small shuttle craft and dropping through a planet’s atmosphere at extreme speeds and temperatures in a few hours.

He could worry about Joe Liebgott later, or never.

A slightly more pressing concern was the look on Dike’s face. The guy looked ready to puke. This wasn’t going to be a good day.

<~>

Winters missed the days when he got to be first off the drop ship. Those moments of silence in outer atmosphere, the fire on his face plate as he rushed through lower atmosphere, the sheer rush of being the first to make the drop and land.

Now he was battalion commander and commanders didn’t drop first. Battalion commanders dropped second to last before the actual supplies. It was a dumb rule, designed to keep him alive and let the enlisted men die with the first rounds of fire. That was never how it actually worked.

The first jump party made it to landing distance with no enemy fire. Maybe the K’wauts hadn’t spotted the orbit ship or the drop ship. As the first drop ship left orbit Winters read on the controls that guns were warming up on the surface, they had to keep moving if they didn’t want to get blown out of the sky.

The second drop ship contained all of second platoon and their direct CO. Winters could see that the doors were open on the drop ship, men lined up to step out, when Dike called a halt.

“Get first platoon on comms! I can’t see them!” Dike’s voice rang out over the control panel.

“Dike, your orders are to jump immediately.” Winters tried not to shout as he pressed down the override on his comms.

On the gritty little display Winters watched the men step up to the door, ready for their jumps, and then it happened again.

“Hold position.” Dike called out and men stepped back from the doors.

“Sir?” Lipton questioned his voice muffled by the coms. They didn’t have time for this. The satellite would only be in proper obit for another forty minutes and Dog and Fox company still needed to drop on the southern border before the second satellite for Able and Item would have to be deployed for their drop.

Anti-aircraft fire burned into the sky. The K’wauts had finally spotted them and the drop ships.  The 506 was the only ship with guns and it was in outer orbit, unable to return fire. The men were sitting ducks.

“Dike, this is a direct order. Jump now.” Winters called out and watched the men exit the second drop ship.

The last two didn’t make it out.

<~>

If Easy Company lost men the orders were for Dog to jump and replace. Standing orders on most missions. The men from the surrounding companies shuffling inward as Easy men or replacements got hit.

“Lieutenant?” asked the man piloting the drop ship. They could hear the shouts from Commander Winters over the comms. They could also hear that Dike had lost his spine and might already be dead, no one could tell who the last two on the second drop ship had been before it went up in flames.

“Take me in for drop orbit, or as close as you can get.” Speirs ordered, snapping in his helmet and going for the reverse drop doors. He could see several of his men’s faces, scared and relived. They didn’t want to jump this high but it was always a relief to finally get out of the drop ship, waiting for the action was the worst part of fighting.

“Speirs! You have a go to jump!” Winters ordered over the radio.

“Sir, we are too high,” the pilot turned to look at him terrified. “You will burn up on entry.” Speirs shrugged and hit the eject button on his door, sliding the hatch between him and the men and then dropping him head first towards the planet. 

Jumping this high might as well be a space walk. Speirs was in complete darkness, his face aimed directly toward the planet. The reverse drop doors were the only way he was making it to the planet, thanks to the handy kick from the ejection module. He would be coming in too fast.

It didn’t matter that his suit burned him, that his vision was nearly pure fire most of the way down. This was when he felt most free and most alive.

<~>

Lip had just gotten his chute off and was grabbing his rifle from his pack when there was a boom impact not that far off to his left. It was probably a supply dump, only they were supposed to drop those crates further to the south, away from the enemy fire. Not like that mattered, drops never went according to plan.

Carwood took one second to sigh to himself before he walked in the direction of the noise. Being a paratrooper meant doing dumb shit like this all the time.

It wasn’t a supply crate.

“Lieutenant Speirs?” Carwood called out to the man who stood in the center of an impact crater. How fast had he come in? Could he even walk with that kind of landing?

“First Sargent Lipton,” Speirs greeted with a little exhale. He reached up and popped off his jump helmet, it was nearly black from atmosphere burn up, and released his chute in swift movements. “I’ve been given command of Easy Company.”

“Very good, sir.” Carwood answered because what else was there to say.

“What’s the situation so far?” Speirs asked releasing his rifle and slapping his wrist comm unit to display what information there was.

“So far we are pretty spread out. I could see first platoon land near Gamma before I dropped.” Carwood gave his own comm unit a double tap to transfer information he had gathered as he dropped.

“Alright,” Speirs looked at the blinking dots on his holo display. “Let’s move.”

Watching Speirs in battle, assaulting the small out cropping of buildings with only half a platoon was like watching Achilles take on the entire Trojan army without breaking a sweat. In comparison to Dike, watching Speirs and following him into battle felt like being commanded by a god.

Perhaps that’s why some of the guys kept up the rumors about his enhancements.

“Lip, did Speirs really do the super hero landing?” George asks when they are sweeping the buildings after the last of the K’wauts have been eliminated from this position.

“George…” Carwood sometimes regretted being best friends with George Luz. Times like right now, or when he wouldn’t stop talking during a holo.

“You don’t have to say anything if you are sworn to some kind of officers and NCO bro code but just don’t blink if it’s true.” Carwood rolled his eyes. George laughed. Shifty looked at the two of them like he thought he was missing out on a joke and that hurt his feelings.

<~>

This part of combat was the worst. The moments after action or right before more shooting started when the mind played tricks on men and fear gripped their hearts.

Speirs understood the sensation. He could even feel it with them if he really concentrated and try to pull on that part of himself that only existed outside of combat when he was safe and clean. Here the other part of him was in control. The part of him that had existed forever but only came to the surface in gunfire.

Silence in his bones.

He wasn’t like that now. They had three guys with holes in them and blood flowing. His med kit had already been used on some other trooper an hour ago. These guys were gonna need a real medic.

“The Doc make it down?” Speirs asked Lipton as he applied pressure to a wound in a man’s leg.

“I think so, sir.” Lipton pulled his sleeve up and pressed hard on the edge of his holo band. The band changed color and turned red. A ping like noise started from Lipton’s band and sounded off in a wide arch to all bands in the area. They were still in the middle of combat and yelling for a medic would just draw attention to their location. The pings rang at decibels the K’wuats couldn’t hear.

Soft footfalls approached quickly from behind Speirs and then The Doc was there with his med pack and calming hands. Eugene ‘Doc’ Roe got to work without a fuss, barely glancing at Lipton and Speirs besides to direct them to put more pressure there or hold here.

It was a wonder to watch. A master at work. Speirs knew that Easy Company liked to boast that they had the best medical officers in the airborne but watching him work was something else. Competency in every movement and action. Calming words and teasing tone. Fast fingers and careful hands. Pale skin and a pink nose. Speirs shook that final thought from his head and focused back on what was happening.

“One bullet, four holes, that’s something Buck.” Roe teased one of the men who groaned at this. Speirs wondered idly if this is what it felt like to watch a master at work. He couldn’t help but be impressed by the smaller man’s clam and efficiency. Never mind the men injured around him, watching Eugene Roe at work was mesmerizing.

<~>

It was a crap drop overall. They had lost Dike and Dukeman in the drop ship. The guys out of third platoon had made it down but their drop ship had also taken a hit and the pilot was dead.

Joe had ended up with a bunch of guys from different platoons. This wasn’t a new experience, that last three drops had been a complete mess. This planet had the benefit of having a temperature that was suitable for their gear, unlike that hell scape desert planet.

“Look who it is!” Whistled some asshat from Fox who had made it into the group at this drop zone. Joe gritted his teeth. “Aw sweetheart don’t be like that! You’ll hurt that pretty mouth!”

He knew what the men said about him, the kind of person they thought he was. It bothered him because he wasn’t a god damn omega, he just had the bad fortune to get parents who didn’t spring for genetic enhancements, not on their fifth kid. His older brother had gotten the basics, taller, better hair, better eyes. His sister had the skin edit. By the time Joe came along his parents had maxed out their free allotment. If they wanted their kids to be on par with every other kid in the world they would have to fork over the big bucks.

“Fuck you!” Joe snapped marching off.

“What’s that about?” Webster asked coming up to Liebgott like a lost puppy.

“Like you don’t fucking know.” Joe did not have time for Webster right now. Webster who had sat out a three month deployment on that fucking desert planet to enjoy some hospital over something as minor as a large leg wound. As if they didn’t have laser sealers and pressure casts.

“Easy, move out!” Lieutenant Welsh commanded.

The first couple of hours were a silent march through terrain that reminded Joe of the forest back home near San Fransisco. Giant trees the size of a sky scraper with thick needles on top. There was snow on the ground but at the moment the sky was clear.

It should have been a fairly easy march to make, cold not withstanding. Sure the K’wauts could be anywhere in the area but the terrain was simply and the men were all rested and fed. It should have been an easy mindless kind of march. Except David Webster was there and he didn’t know how to make things easy.

“I’ve was reading up on this planet before the jump…” Webster began, the groan from Liebgott was audible nearly all the way to the back of the group.

“Webster, how in the hell did you get your hands on a holo about this planet when the army only mapped it six months ago?” Martin asked incredulously.

“Oh, Nasa has had this planet in the charts since 2030. It’s similarities to the temperate zone on earth made it a possible settlement planet. There have been probes in this sector for a least a century.” Webster explained completely unaware of the looks the rest of the guys were giving him. “The vast majority of the plant and animal life are in the oceans. In fact this planet has something very similar to what we would call Sharks on earth.”

This time the groan could be heard from more than one source.

“Will y’all shut your damn yaps!” Hissed a voice. “We are supposed to be under noise control.”

Webster shrugged looking helpless with his wide eyes and open mouth, as usual. Joe really didn’t know how this guy survived as long as he had. Sure he had been at jump training with the rest of the core on Toccoa but he always seemed to be half out of. It drove Joe crazy. Not in a good way.

“I hope I can make it to the ocean here.” Webster continued, this time just to Joe.

“Web, we’ll be lucky to make it out of this alive. Forget the fucking ocean.”

The problem was Webster. The problem was Joe had no desire to have a relationship with a fucking paratrooper. He wasn’t gonna be one of those guys who comes home from space with a boyfriend. He knew it happened but he didn’t want to be one of those guys.

David fucking Kenyon Webster tried his fucking resolve. He was endlessly pleased to accept any and all attention from Joe. He seemed completely unaware of the way he looked or sounded or acted. They would stay friends and that would be it. If they lived of course.

<~>

“We need to get into that settlement.”

That had been the order. Speirs had gone because they were going to move all of Easy company to retake the location. It was too close to the bottle neck the peninsula created. If the K’wauts had it then they had cover to cross the strip of land connecting their main bases with were the airborne was stationed.

The charge was going as well as it could be expected. They cleared out most of the buildings, blew up the ones that couldn’t be cleared. A handful of guys went down to gunfire as the men ran towards cover.

They were almost clear when the first round fell from the sky, barely missing Lipton.

“Get down!” Speirs ordered, even as he ran out to grab his First Sargent. He knew there wasn’t cover. He knew there was a chance he would get hit. It didn’t really matter to the part of his brain that was ON during a fight. He had a man down, vulnerable, that’s all that mattered.

“Captain?” Lipton questioned as Speirs grabbed him by his webbing and dragged the man to cover.

It wasn’t until he was back behind the men, behind the main line, that he felt the flame hot pain of the hits he had taken. He got an order out “Get Lip to a medic” before the adrenaline spike of the fight finally crapped out of his blood stream.

Speirs had a second to realize his knees were giving out and lean back so that he didn’t fall on his face.

“Cap’s been hit!”

“Get the medic.”

“Fuck that, grab him! Bull, get his legs. We gotta get him to Doc.”

<~>

“What happened?” Gene rushed over

Speirs is being held down by three other guys and they were having a struggle. Gene can see blood in several places and Speirs is still thrashing.

“He ran out of cover to get to Lip.” It’s Martin who answers. That’s when Gene stops looking at the wounds on Speirs and looks at all three men holding him down. “What the hell is wrong with you three? You’re all alphas! Get out of here right now! He will thrash until you do! Go!”

The moment the other men were out of the building Speirs relaxed on the table. Gene was going to have a word with the men again about remembering alpha instincts got worse when injured. The problem of course was that alphas tended not to listen to information about themselves and they were strong enough to manhandle any beta out of their way.

Three hundred years ago they would have only placed a single alpha in a unit. Preferred pack dynamics. Back then they made sure that commanding officers were higher ranking alphas than their NCOs. Now with everyone altered, only the strength, agility, and increased healing remained. Gone was the posturing and the battle rages. Most alphas never had a heat.

Gene had been given all the medical files of the men in Easy and all the other companies also dropping into this planet. Lieutenant Ronald Speirs had experienced a heat when he was in his teens, extremely rare these days. He was as unaltered as an alpha could be in this century.

“I got you.” Gene soothes, brushing his hand over Speirs cheek and neck. It’s an older technique, omega calming method. He had learned it from his grandmother, an omega like himself. It was one of the big reasons that Gene was such a trusted medic.

Speirs stilled under his hands until he was near motionless. Gene got to work, injecting the replacement blood boosters and broad spectrum antibiotics. Then he moves to pulling out the K’waurt slugs from Speirs shoulder, abdomen, and thigh. With the metal out Gene stitches up the Lieutenant quickly. He will have to take out the stitches in five days or Speirs will get a nasty case of inflammation but other than that the man is out of the woods, so to speak. Knowing what he knows of Speirs there is a high chance the officer will end up pulling his stitches several times over.

Gene brushes the tips of his fingers against the shell of Speirs’ ear. The motion will pull him out of the omega induced calm Gene had placed him in earlier.

Two hands shoot up and grab his wrists, holding Gene in his stooped over position above Speirs.The Lieutenant’s eyes are open, but his gaze is hazy.

“You smell…” Speirs’ words are slurred slightly. Gene’s not surprised, it takes betas at least fifteen minutes to wake from the calm meditative like state. Alphas can normally do it in half the time. Speirs is conscious instantly. Which can only mean one thing. He had lied in his medical forms about how altered he was.

“It’s okay.” Gene tries. His middle finger is long enough to tap Speirs ear again, a motion that is supposed to communicate safety and wakefulness to the lizard part of the brain. “You got hit. I fixed you up. You are in the aid station.”

“Alphas?” Speirs asked in a deep voice. His eyes tracking the room.

“No alphas. Just me.” That doesn’t seem to help. Speirs must have pushed himself out of the calm by sheer force of will. His body hasn’t shaken the last of the numbing effects. “It’s Doc.” He tries. “Corporal Eugene Roe.”

“Mine.” Speirs answers in a growl.

Gene feels his throat go dry. It’s a small thing, being held like this. Minor in comparison to the heat of a firefight. Yet, he feels his heart beat against his chest in a way that had no rationale explanation.

“Captain Speirs.” Gene tried again.

“Ron.” Speirs corrected.

“Alright, Ron.” Gene answered softly. “You are okay, I got you.”

Speirs sits up groggy and frustrated. Gene can see that the part of his brain currently working isn’t the rational part, the Captain is running on pure instinct right now. Maybe that’s why the claim doesn’t bother Gene. Or maybe it’s the other thing. The fact that Gene finds Speirs attractive, even now injured and covered in blood he is handsome.

“How about we just sit here a minute, quiet like, until you feel ready to move,” Gene offers. Speirs nods in agreement. They sit together in the cold surgery room with nothing but each other for company. It’s an easy kind of company.

Five minutes later Speirs shakes his head, like a dog shaking off water, and finally looks alert. He looks at Gene for a moment, gaze steady and clear for the first time since he came in. Gene doesn’t know what the other man sees in those moments but he seems to come to a decision because Speirs stands up with little effort and leaves the room for the common area without a word.

“Doc!” Spina calls out. “You ready for the next guy?”

“Yes, send ‘im in.” Gene replies.

<~>

Ron isn’t great with apologies. Honestly Ron isn’t great with most forms of communication that require he talk to people he isn’t overly familiar. His sister always told him it’s because he has a very bad case of ‘resting bitch face with a side of dark humor.’

The point is he realizes that what he did the other day was completely out of line. He has years of training to fall back on to know that what he said when he first woke up was not an acceptable response.

It took an entire day for him to gather up the courage to go talk to the good Doctor. The enlisted men loved the Doc, they treated him in equal parts as kid brother or concerned school teacher. The officers on the other hand had the fear of god put into them when it came to Eugene Roe.

Ron wasn’t obvious that he was considering something, at least not to most people. Carwood Lipton might be one of four people on this planet that could figure out the small differences between Ron’s different thinking faces.

“Just say sorry to whoever it is.” Lipton offers at command after another boring meeting.

“I was going to.” Ron snaps somewhat petulantly.

“Good.” Lipton pats him on the back and moves off to go mother someone else.

It’s not that he is scared. It’s not that he is embarrassed. It’s that half out of it on omega zen vibes he had said something aloud he had never voiced, even to himself.

Ron doesn’t really know Eugene Roe. They have been on the same transport ship a dozen times. He is pretty sure they have sat at the same mess table at least once. He knows that twice they took showers at the same time because he remembers what Doc’s skin had looked like wet and dripping.

His brain knew things he didn’t want to know, like the fact that the Doc and him were a mutual lock. It was why he always kind of knew where Eugene was if they were within a certain distance.

They talked about these kinds of things in school and in training. Alpha’s had more of the brain waves that sent out emotions and information, it was one of the reasons they were normally commanders and leaders. In opposition Omega’s could negate or remove other’s mental waves, calming the masses or just knocking people out. A bunch of left over parts of the brain from when humanity had been sharks or some shit like that.

Ron knows that whatever exact wavelength he operates on is the same one that Gene’s brain uses. A mutual lock. It more than just genetics. It’s compatibility. Like a soul mate for his brain. Fuck.

The Doc is sitting out in the cold on an empty supply crate idly smoking his e-stick when Speirs finds him. He leans against the wall near the other man, hoping that the right words will finally come to him.

He lets the silence stretch out between them. Ron doesn’t open his mouth to speak the eight different things he thinks to say _You smell wonderful_ , or _I was half out of my mind_ , or _what’s french for sorry_ , or _can you feel the connection we have?_ He just waits.

Roe doesn’t have the charity to put Speirs out of his misery and speak first. He just sits there, smoking with a small smirk at the edges of his lips. Speirs wants to taste that smirk.

“It was out of line.” Speirs settles on saying finally. Doc gives him a look like lots of things in his life are out of line.

“I didn’t mind.” Roe answered eventually, a slow smile on his face. Speirs didn’t know what to do with that so he did the thing that he always did when situations didn’t make sense. He walked away.

<~>

The Army has the following rules about having a sexual relationships while deployed:

Please, pretty please with sprinkles on top, don’t.

If you find that you cannot follow the first instructions then: Do not have sex in zero G. Don’t do it. You will get written up if you even suggest it as an idea to a recruit.

If you have a sexual relationship with a member of your unit, please make it not your direct superior officer for the love of all that is holy.

If you find that you HAVE to have a sexual relationship with your direct superior officer you will be forced to fill out five times the paper work.

Gene was paraphrasing.

It was his unfortunate duty as chief medical officer for Easy company to have a sit down with every couple, and be the person to enforce the paperwork rule. He had experienced the true joy of trial by fire with this particular rule two days after Winters was given command of Easy Company and he showed up with Lewis Nixon to fill out their joint paperwork.

Two hours later Gene could with complete confidence say that Dick Winters was a full body blusher and nothing on God’s green Earth can make Lewis Nixon blush but he will stammer.

The struggle was that many pairs didn’t want to fill out the paperwork because then it meant they were forced into quarterly physicals and blood tests. If the army wasn’t going to stop the fucking it was going to make sure no one got sick doing it. They could get sick or killed from other things, but they would not get sick or killed from fucking a fellow army member.

Gene was honestly convinced that the only reason Winters and Nixon had filled out the paperwork was because Winters was a stickler for following protocol when it was for the greater good. Left to Lewis Nixon, Gene would have found out they were have sex when he inevitably woke them up in a shared bunk. They had honestly stopped trying be subtle four months ago.

Another facet of this particular responsibility was that Gene had to keep his ear to the rumor mill and try to get any pairing reluctant to be public to at least for the love of god, fill out the god damn paper work.

There had been some mutterings about Liebgott and Webster for a while now. They were an entertaining dynamic to say the least. Recently the talk was getting a bit more colorful.

“I will give my entire month’s rations of e-stick packs for them to just fuck already and put us all out of our misery.”

“Toye, don’t say such things. The aliens might hear and learn our weakness.” George Luz replied in a pitch perfect of that starlet from the holos on the transport ship.

“Suck my dick Luz.” Toye snapped back in irritation.

“Not without the proper paperwork.” Luz simpered and winked at Doc.

George Luz’s ongoing flirtation with death and Joe Toye notwithstanding it was probably a good idea to have a look at what was going on between Webster and Liebgott.

The next day Gene caught Joe Liebgott at meal time, on the way out of the structure they were using for the mess station.

“Liebgott,” Gene called out to the other man as he stood to a side refilling his e-stick.

“Hey Doc, what’s up?” Liebgott answered with a casual smile.

“Do you need to make an appointment to come see me?” Gene asked in what had been described as his ‘concerned mother voice.’ Liebgott looked genuinely confused.

“Uh… no. Unless there’s something in my medical records I am forgetting.”

“No,” Gene shook his head, maybe it was just talk. Then again he could see out of the corner of his eye Webster watching the exchange. “Just come see me when you and Webster are ready.”

As Gene walked away he could hear Liebgott practically shout “What the fuck!” He also noticed a very small smile on Webster’s face at this outburst. So clearly he was not that wrong.

<~>

“So it’s true?”

“Which part?” Speirs asked. There were a lot of things that Lipton could be referring to. Of course Speirs knew he was asking about THAT, because it would be on the mind of all the men after his little incident three days ago. Martin, Bull, and Grant had told Lip about how Speirs had thrashed like a man possessed after he was injured.

“About you.” Lipton offers it not as an accusation, more like an emphatic agreement.

“My dad was completely altered up to code. My mom’s family has done every alteration required for the last five generations. I have all the important genes.” Speirs responded, not really answering the questions Carwood Lipton had the manners not to ask more. “When it comes down to it first Sargent any one of us alphas can have a moment like I did, under the right circumstances. That’s why they give you all those talks in boot camp and then run your ass ragged.”

Lip took that as enough. He didn’t really want to know if Captain Speirs had lied to the army about his genetic code. It didn’t matter. Ronald Speirs was the best officer Easy Company had had since Winters had been promoted to Battalion.

<~>

Webster doesn’t know what he did, but he did something to piss of Joe Liebgott. Sure Joe had been biting mad when Dukeman died in the drop ship with their piece of shit commanding officer. But the first day on planet had included enough action that Joe seemed to have burned off his anger.

Joe Toy and Bill Guarnere had taken a blast yesterday, each loosing a leg. They were fine now, Doc Roe had sealed off the wounds and given them each prosthetics. The basic models would be all the men had until Easy returned to a space station where each could be outfitted with a neural implant prosthetic that moved and felt like their real legs.

The recent loses seem to have set Joe off. At least that’s what Webster thinks happened. It’s taken Webster a while but he is pretty sure he understands some of what motivates Joe, or at least how Joe reacts to things.

About half of those reactions are just anger.

The trick was that there were different flavors of anger. Teeth sucking anger, Joe was teasing someone and that someone was probably Webster. Ending sentences with fuck anger, not real anger more like exasperation if you were watching his face close enough. Ignoring you anger, Webster had done something that upset Joe and would be ignored until Joe was ready to verbally ream him in a special Joe flavored version of an apology.

But this was a new flavor.

Sure Webster had always been ‘college’ or ‘college boy’ to Joe. But recently he was barely even ‘Web’. It was only Webster. Maybe to a civilian this would have seemed like nothing. Paratroopers lived and died by their nick names. The only people who were not called their nick names to their face were people like Winters who everyone even Nixon affectionally referred to as ‘Dad’ behind his back.

The rest of the platoon still called him ‘College’, but Webster noticed they were getting more and more looks every time Joe called him Webster.

“You two having some kind of marital spat?” Chuck Grant asks pressed up against Webster in a foxhole.

“No?” Webster answers because he honestly isn’t sure.

“My mom used to say most marital arguments can be solved by getting naked and waiting for the other person to get home. Mother normally agreed.”

“You realize that Joe and I are not actually a thing right?” Webster tries because he is very unsure of where to go with this.

Chuck snorts. “Sure.”

It’s not that he hasn’t thought about it. It’s not that he hasn’t had his hands on himself and thought about it being Joe. The problem is that David Webster knows, all the way to his bones, that Joe Liebgott would never look at him that way.

So what if he is a little in love with his best friend? Nothing’s coming of it.

<~>

It had started with that leap over the log earlier. One of his stitches had pulled with the action and Speirs had felt the pain do something funny. It’ didn’t feel like normal pain. He felt different.

He felt too hot.

His mind wouldn’t shut up. He could barely hear Lip over his own mental buzz, like sinus pressure only a million times worse.

Every part of him itched.

“Ron?” The voice sounded very far away, like it was coming through a bad satellite feed or something.

Then his legs stopped working.

“Fuck!” Someone shouted. “I’ll got get Doc.”

The name Doc brought the image of a smaller man with dark hair, pale skin, and eyes that seemed to change color in the light. He would be fine. His other half was coming.

<~>

“Doc!” Lip calls out returning from a patrol. He is out of breath and flushed, he must have run all the way back to the rally point. “Something is wrong with Speirs.”

“Did he get hit?” Gene asks already gathering his pack and following Lip back towards where the Lieutenant is laying against a tree. From a distance it is easy to see something is wrong with their commanding officer.

“No he wasn’t even close to enemy fire. He just sort of collapsed.” Lip’s face betrayed how much this bothered him. They had been on the planet for maybe three weeks. Speirs had taken three slugs early on but since then he had been fine. Well as fine as he could be with being in command of a unit set to hold a planet. Not to mention the cold.

“Help me carry him.” Gene tells Lipton. They get under each of Speirs’ arms and wrap arms around his middle, dragging him back to the building Gene has for an aid station.

There is a chance this is something environmental. A plant they didn’t know about before. Or it could be just sheer exhaustion. The last option, the one that Gene is afraid of is that Speirs is in heat. Before alterations Alphas tended to experience heats every seven years, give or take two years. Speirs would be due for one soon if he held to that pattern.

“Get out of here, Lip.” Gene orders once they have Speirs seated on one of the chairs in the empty room in the aid station.

“You sure Doc?” Lip’s eyes keep shooting back to Speirs looking concerned. “I’m a beta. I can help without upsetting him.”

“I know that,” Gene waves him off, grabbing his scanner. “If this is environmental I don’t need both our CO and XO out of commission.” That seems to convince Lip to leave, but he does not look happy about it.

Speirs is coming around now that he is out of the cold. His head snaps up quickly once he realizes there is someone in the room with him. For a moment he looks ready to attack or bolt until his eyes land on Gene in front of him.

“Doc Roe.” Speirs says softly, happily. Not good.

“Speirs can you tell me what happened?” Gene asks while the scanner takes readings.

“Stitches pulled. Got hot.” Speirs explains. “It was hard to walk.” He shrugs like that explains the fact that he had collapsed during a patrol. “I’m fine.”

The scanner confirms what Gene had feared. Speirs has elevated levels of just about everything. He is running a fever and his adrenaline is sky rocketing by the minute. It’s a miracle that he hasn’t vibrated out of his skin already.

“You’re in heat.” Gene explains solemnly. Speirs shakes his head like he is trying to throw off water.

“No.” Speirs snaps.

“Yes. Probably been building for several days already.” Gene starts digging into his supplies. He has something. All standard kits still come with the older injections. They can do more than what they were originally intended to do. He is going to need them. He finds the first one. “I’ll take care of you.”

<~>

His brain feels foggy, wrong.

“What do you mean?” Speirs reaches out for Roe, noticing how tan his skin looks in comparison to the doctor’s. Roe has such pale delicate skin. It probably scars easily. A mating bite would stand out on his neck, red against all the creamy skin. Oh. He is in heat.

“We have to get you through this, quickly.” Roe explains. At first Speirs doesn’t get it, can’t get it, because what the doctor is saying is insane. A barbaric solution that no one uses anymore. Heats can be solved three ways quickly, you can kill, you can fight someone stronger until they basically almost kill you, or you can fuck. The army prefers the first option for it’s alphas, when it can be managed.

“You can’t.” Speirs groans. His jaw aches, the muscles tense and pulsing. “I’ll make it fine on my own.” He just needs a minute to gather himself, they can set him loose on the enemy line and he will be fine.

“No you won’t.” Doc practically growls, digging in his bag. “Not in a combat situation. Not with the men needing you. You don’t get to make this call. I do.” Speirs feels jittering watching Doc move around, knowing what they are talking about. Option three.

Ron remembered his first heat. It had been terrible but nothing he couldn’t live through. He had spent a week in a room tearing the walls to shreds before his dad had relented and thrown in one of those robot surrogates. He had pulled the bot to pieces with his bare hands, the thrill of the kill calming him. Too bad his father had spent the money on a bot designed for sex.

This one felt different, he barely felt that rage. He was more focused, and his focus was on a single person. It wasn’t the aimless lust and rage he had felt as a teen. Now he was laser focused on Roe. Speirs knew that this feeling was the heat, that he barely knew the other man outside of work. They hadn’t even been in the same unit until this drop. He couldn’t logically be this obsessed, and enamored with a person he barely knew.

Speirs realized there were things on the side table now. Bottles and injections laying out. Roe opened the door for a moment and Speirs heard himself practically growl at the smell, at the idea, of other alphas out there. Luckily the door was closed after a moment, Roe had slapped something on the door and Speirs got a sinking feeling.

“Quarantine?”

“We don’t have the time to risk doing this the long way.” Roe explained, now untwisting the caps on the injections. “There could be another attack any minute. Gotta get you better.”

Oh no. It was one thing for a medic to assist an alpha with a heat. The guide books still had regulations on how to do that. Alphas strapped down and nearly sedated. The problem was that way took a week. The other way, this way, it was unbreakable and about a sixth of time. All of it would be over in a matter of hours.

“Gene, no.” Speirs moved to stand up but it was too late. Roe had taken three injectors to his neck at once and pressed them all in before Speirs could even stand. Bonding injections. Mating.

They had maybe a breath of peace and silence between them. In that moment Speirs saw just how determined the omega was to see this through. It still felt wrong. And then it didn’t any longer. The scent of omega burst into the room a thousand times stronger than anything Speirs had ever smelled.

If he thought his jaw ached before it was nothing compared to the NEED he felt in his bones now. He needed to bite something. He needed to bite what was his. His omega. Here.

<~>

Speirs is on him faster than he expected, damn alpha speed. It’s not violent, like he thought it would be, instead Speirs seems to be just rubbing himself against Gene with his entire body. There’s a hand on his ass and another wrapped firmly around him holding him bodily against Speirs.

Gene can tell he already has stubble burn on his neck, the way his skin is starting to burn. That and the injection site still stings. He has always been attracted to Ronald Speirs, a flicker of a flame in his mind every time he sees the other man. Having Speirs pressed up against him makes that flicker turn into a full blown flame. God it’s been a long time since he had sex, the concept alone has him hard in his pants almost instantly. Gene can feel the Speirs is equally aroused and they aren’t even touching in a sexual way beyond a mild kind of dry humping.

He is clear headed enough to know they need to get out of clothes, there aren’t extras lying around and they can’t afford for Speirs to rip them off both of them.

“Shh.” Gene calms, as he moves towards the zippers on Speirs’ uniform. “I got you.” Speirs seems mollified by this and allows Gene to strip him and then remove his own uniform. The room is freezing now that he is naked and a shiver shakes him. Speirs moans sadly at that and moves forward again, laying himself completely over Gene, hands roaming in rubbing motions.

It feels incredible. Gene knows he only has a little while longer before the hormones he gave himself will make the ache for the bonding near unbearable. He will get itchy and sore all over if he goes too long between the injections and the mating bond. He has to keep moving. He grabs the lube, thank god for standard med kits, and pours it onto his fingers.

Gene gets two fingers inside himself with no trouble at all, the hormones are kicking in relaxing all of his muscles. The third finger burns but he pours more lube onto his hand and gets as many fingers in as he can stand. Speirs never lets go of him, hands roaming and mouthing at Gene’s neck and chest.

“Bientot.” Gene reassures Speirs who whimpers as his tongue runs a line along Gene’s ear. At the words Speirs bites, hard, onto the shell of Gene’s ear. Enough to hurt but not enough to draw blood, not yet. “I know cher.” Speirs pants in response.

Gene wraps his lube covered hand around Speirs erection and pulls the other man into a kiss. They should kiss before they get started. You are supposed to kiss your mate.

<~>

“First Sargent Lipton?” Winters looked up from the maps he head been reading over. Turns out his instructors were right about still needing to be able to read hard copies in this day and age. Nixon looked up from whatever he had been doing on holo tab when Lipton entered their shelter.

Lipton stood there for a moment and scratched his neck in a way that was not normally part of his nature. Carwood was hesitating to say something.

“What is it Lip?” Winters tried again, hoping the casual tone would make the other man feel relaxed enough to say whatever it was that had him coming here.

“It’s Captain Speirs, sir.” Lipton began. Winters had a moment of terror that he had lost another commanding officer for Easy company, this time a good one. “Doc Roe has placed the two of them in quarantine.”

That was…

Winters looked over at Nixon whose face looked equally as shocked.

“Thank you Sargent.” Winters replied finally. “Let the men know to go to Doc Spina until the quarantine sign comes down. We don’t need anyone catching what Speirs has.” Winters watched the look on Lipton’s face, the way he chewed his lips like he thought something was very wrong about what had just been said. “Dismissed.” Winters waved the other man off.

After Lipton left the small structure Winters turned to look at Nixon, who in the moments between had pulled something up on his holo tab and was frowning very intently at the screen.

“What?” Winters asked, fearing the outcome.

“I got the last scans the Doc performed.” Nixon turned the screen towards Winters so he could read the findings and the summary of symptoms. “He went into fucking Heat, Dick.” Nix sighed.

“He’ll be out of commission for a week.” Dick was not feeling great at this exact moment. Lipton could command Easy in the mean time, they could manage it but this medical emergency was not something they needed right now.

“No, Dick you didn’t read all of it.” Nix tabs to the the next page of information with his finger. The new information doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Doc Roe’s kit logged three injections removed and used. The first was a simple muscle relaxant. The second was a hormone cocktail that had many applications. The third injection was a nitrate, blood flow.

At first Dick couldn’t figure out what would be treated with those three injections. Then he remembered his middle school biology class in a vivid flash. ‘With our advancement in genetics it is now near impossible to accidentally bond.’

“What the hell is Doc thinking?” Nixon asked for the both of them.

<~>

This heat didn’t feel anything at all like his first time. He had been half out of his mind with rage and practically a child. He had also been alone. Now, it feels like all the things that make life harder have fallen away. All those niceties that everyone thinks about are gone. The ache in his feet. The worry that his men don’t respect him. The fear and the doubt have fallen away from his mind.

There is only this. There is only now.

Finally the part of his brain that had always known Doc Roe was attractive doesn’t have to fight the rest of his brain for control. He can run heated lips over the cheek bones he thinks about late at night. He can taste lips and not feel self-conscious about his rank or position. The taste of salt and sweat on his tongue doesn’t bother his higher functions, he just feels pleasure.

They are standing. That isn’t right. He lifts the other man and moves to the table that is both a bed and no a bed, its padding meant to hold an injured body. Now that one of them is sitting he can finally take care of his omega. More than dealing with his own pleasure he wants to worship his mate.

Time gets blurry because he has no need to count minutes or seconds. His mouth learns the curve of a shoulder and the taste of hips. He swallows his mate down hungrily. He has never enjoyed this act in the past, always so focused on his teeth and the position, now he reveals in the ease of the action. His mouth feels full and his jaw aches in the best way.

“Dieu” His omega cries as he swallows. The taste doesn’t bother him this time, it tastes like everything he has ever denied himself.

<~>

The medical journals all talk about the danger to the omega or beta. Nearly a hundred years of research says that an alpha in heat is a manic monster. Gene had seen the old photographs, starting in black and white and transitioning to the old Digital of the bruises and scars alphas left on their mates.

It was half of the reason they had developed the mating drugs. A relaxed omega or beta didn’t struggle and thus didn’t end up covered in marks. The extra hormones giving them an edge. It was the safest way.

This was nothing at all like anything Gene had read in all of his training. He wasn’t being mauled. He wasn’t some object with which Speirs was facilitating his own pleasure. Speirs didn’t even seem inclined to handle his own erection any time soon.

Part of Gene wanted to be upset with himself for making a rash choice. The other part of him was currently draped over the table with a tongue in his ass.

“S’il vows plait.” Gene heard himself begging. He really wasn’t sure if he wanted this to stop or for it to never stop. He was too weak to do much more than lay there panting, over stimulated. Speirs hadn’t given him recover time after he came, just flipped him and begun the assault anew.

This wasn’t helping. This wasn’t what they needed. God.

“Speirs.” He tried. The words feeling heavy on his tongue, slower coming out of his mouth as his brain attempted to translate in its drugged state. All it earned him was his cheeks spread wider. Gene huffed and tried again.

“Ron.” This earned him a reaction, a pause in the current activities. “You need to bite me now.” Gene put effort into making sure he was speaking in English, and slowly, clearly.

Ron eyes were unfocused as he shook his head and then moved to resume his current endeavor.

“Please.” Gene tried, making eye contact with his head turned. “I need you mon cher.”

It broke the magic spell. Ron went from soft and relaxed to a hungry kind of scrambling. He pulled Gene back against him, his front to Gene’s back until they were seated on the floor. This is not the position Gene would have picked. Honestly he isn’t sure what he would have done if he was completely in control here.

Moments later when Ron maneuvers them exactly how he wants, and then pushes into Gene with agonizing slowness he takes back the thought about this position. Seated like this Ron has his hands free to hold Gene in any and every way he chooses. It also means that after the second thrust Gene can feel directly against his prostate.

“Cher.” Gene begs leaning his head to one side so his neck is bare and on display. Ron growls at the sight, a sound that is a moan pulled over rocks. One hand is on Gene’s chin, pulling his head to an even steeper angle exposing the tendons in his neck further. Ron’s other hand wraps around Gene’s dick and starts to pull in time with the shallow thrust.

Gene feels completely encased and completely exposed at the same time. He is wrapped in Ron. Knees pushed apart wide and shins twisted up in each other. Ron’s arms pressed against his ribs in different directions. He is warm all over, sweaty where their skin touches to the point that it itches. At the same time his entire front is exposed to the cold of the room and he has nothing to look at besides the ceiling at this angle.

“The most beautiful fucking skin.” Ron whispers into his neck. “Do you have any idea what you look like?” The question sounds punched out of the other man. Gene feels about the same, his chest is tensing up and he can feel that buzz in the back of his head again that means he is getting close.

His world shatters apart behind his eyes, starting at the base of his spine and traveling up until the fire of it wraps his brain. Right as he explodes he feels the blunt pain of teeth at his neck, the burn of pierced skin and the warm gush of blood. It pushes him through the last of his release. The snap in the back of his mind barely feels like anything in comparison. The small connection he now shared with Speirs settling into his consciousness smoothly.

<~>

Speirs woke up twice. The first time was his brain coming awake, his eyes opening and his sense of self coming online. The second time was a ping in the back of his mind about half a foot to his right.

Then his other sense finally made the connections to his neurons and he took in his surroundings. They were still in the medic room, laying on the transport gurney at table height. He expected to see things around the room torn up. He remembered feeling out of control, loosing that sense of self that kept him in check. The room looked almost exactly the same.

In fact the only thing that really seemed to be different was Roe.

_Gene._

Huh. That felt weird. Like a mental echo. Or that itch right before you had to sneeze. There was a response, but it felt less like words in his head and more like how sunshine felt on his skin.

Speirs turned his head to look at the man laying next to him. Gene’s eyes were open and alert but his face was soft.

“How do you feel?” Ron asked because it was the most important question.

“Sore.” Gene looked off to the side. “I’m not actually injured. No wounds. Just sore.”  Gene shifts a little and then his face winces. Ron feels an ache in his back for a flash of a second, enough to know how it hurts and then the sensation is gone.

A clear ‘what now’ moment hung between them. It stretched in an elastic band in-between their minds, snapping back on both of them as they waited.

“You feel well enough to go back out there?” Gene asked in his doctor voice, the one he used on everyone when they were getting patched up. Ron didn’t want that voice. He wanted the soft sounds from a few hours ago.

The little look the Doc gave him told Ron that at least some of his thoughts had come through their connection. He smiled, his best smile, the smile he used when he wanted to get his way.

“No?” Ron tried. Gene just narrowed his eyes at him.

“Get dressed. You are going back to CP.” Gene ordered in a flat tone. Ron felt his face fall. “We can meet tonight.”

Well that wasn’t so bad. Ron could go pretend for a few hours that everything was fine, that he was recovering from some weird alien fever. Then he could hunt down Roe and they could do what he really wanted. Again.

<~>

The problem is that they haven’t had much interaction before this. The problem is that Ronald Speirs is the type of person to run headlong into danger without a second thought and Gene tends to get yell-y at that behavior.

When Ron had done something dangerous this morning Gene had felt the need to give the other man a piece of his mind, in person. This is a bad idea in it’s own way. They are newly mated. Each of them going from basically ignoring the concept of sex on the transport ship for week and now with the other person available nearly all the time. It’ didn’t hurt that Speirs looked the way he did or that he seemed willing to bend over backwards for Gene. Although Gene seemed to be the one bending over again.

The other problem was that Gene was abusing his powers as the medical officer to requisition a room so they could fuck, again. They had left quarantine yesterday morning. He had been able to play it off as a false alarm with the men but he knew that Nixon would have the supply inventory and know what injections he had used the day before.

“We have to tell Battalion.” Gene insists as he finally goes about putting clothing back on. Ron seems disinclined to moving and in fact spreads his legs a little wider.

“Of course.” Ron agrees and his smile turns wolfish suddenly. Gene realizes, somewhat belatedly, that he had been staring at Ron. “We don’t have to leave just yet.”

“We should.” Gene puts force into his voice. It does nothing. The feed back in his head tells him he has been found out. The hand up his leg and the other running up his arm are like drop zones, pulling him him downward. “This is the last time.”

“Today.” Ron adds. Gene groans, both in exasperation and because Ron has zeroed in on the spot on his neck where the bite mark still stings but also feels like a direct line to his dick.

<~>

Joe had gotten nicked by a grenade frag while out on patrol of quadrant five. Alley had taken most of the hit but he was going to make it. Joe had gone back out with his platoon to knock of the garrison of K’wauts who had tried to cross the water to the north east of quadrant five.

It had been a mess of a counter attack because somehow Winters and Speirs ended up with guns on the line. The two of them might as well have done all of it themselves the way they never showed any hesitation of fear.

He hated and envied them. They were what Alphas were supposed to be, not the pathetic excuse he had turned out to be. All the anger, none of the control and none of the power. What was even the point of having the genetic marker for an Alpha if you were nothing like an alpha at all.

“Liebgott, you gonna let me look at that wound on your neck or not?” Doc Roe stands before him looking exasperated.

“Sure Doc.” Joe huffs, and opens up his uniform so the other man can get to the neck wound. At least the aid building isn’t crawling with wounded men. Only two other guys got hit and they are off on beds, away from where Joe is getting patched up.

“Keep your head straight.” Doc clucks like a mother hen and Joe keeps his head straight, meaning Roe had to tilt his head to to work on the wound.

This close, at this angle, Joe could see the marks clearly on the Doctors neck. A near perfect oval of indentions with deeper marks for the wolf teeth.

Joe had seen Roe shirtless three weeks ago in the showers on the transport ship. He hadn’t been looking in any particular way, it was just a piece of information his brain had held onto. Joe Liebgott knew that three weeks ago Doc Roe did not have a bonding bite on his neck.

He stiffened at the realization. There were only so many Alphas in the unit. And only one who Roe had spent any time with recently. Two days ago Speirs had come down with something and been locked up in the surgery room with Roe for the night.

Liebgott hoped that his posture and uneven breathing could be masked by the small stitches Roe was applying to his neck. The hope evaporated when the Doc pulled back and looked Liebgott in the face. His eye followed to where Liebgott was looking and one of his hands came up to touch the skin by the mark.

The mating mark was mostly hidden but clearly they had both seen its reveal now.

Joe didn’t know what he thought would come next. He knew that Roe had a reputation of putting men in their place who went out of line but who could be counted on to brush your hair and treat you kindly when you are injured.

“We got a problem?” Doc asked finally, when Joe had finally been certain that nothing would come of it.

“No.” Joe snapped. Fuck mating. Fuck mating marks. Fuck the way they made his heart jump. “None of my business.” Joe offered and slid off the table.

He didn’t need this. He didn’t need these images in his head while he was busy fighting for his life on some godforsaken planet in the middle of a nowhere system. And yet his mind wouldn’t let him forget the oval of scabs that would scar on pale skin or the split second of fire in blue eyes before they had gone cold.

His mind was a piece of shit because he was barely back to his foxhole before the eyes were a different shade of blue and the pale skin was dusted with dark hair.

He needed to cut it out. There was no way that would ever happen. He shouldn’t be day dreaming about Webster right now. The other man would never carry his mating mark because everyone knew that Webster was an alpha just like Joe.

<~>

Dick has had to do a lot of uncomfortable things in his army career. He has had to do dangerous things or give orders he was completely against. He also one time had to fill out paperwork with a very smug and amused Lew next to him. This will now take the number one spot as most uncomfortable thing he has had to do for his job.

They are in regimental C.P., in a back room of the building that was not intended to be anything more than a storage locker of some sort but it’s the best chance of privacy for this kind of meeting, and legally this is supposed to be private.

Speirs doesn't even look embarrassed, in fact he looks slightly pleased with himself. Like he just found something really good left behind by a K’waut. Doc Roe doesn’t have much of an expression at all, except for the slightest quirk of his lips.

Spina looks ready to throw himself into enemy fire to get out of this.

“And how long has this been going on?” Spina asks the two men.

“Three days.” Speirs responds easily. Spina looks at Dick to double check, like he would know if the medic and Captain had been screwing longer than stated. He shrugs semi helplessly. Nix of course chooses that moment to burst into the room like a drunk sailor.

“Mazel tov!” Nix exclaims and then pats Speirs on the back.

“Nix.” Dick sighs.

“Good news boys, Division isn’t going to have both of you court-marshaled for disobeying orders. In fact because the Doc is a non combatant, Division legally can’t do a thing about this new lovely little marriage.”

“Bonds are not marriages, that’s an extremely archaic type of thinking.” Spina corrects.

“Right, yes of course.” Nix waves his hands dramatically. “Finish up the dreaded paperwork and then both of you are back to work. No honeymoon for you Sparky. We don’t have the time or man power for that.” Dick pinches his nose because at this comment Roe and Speirs now seem to be having a conversation with just their eyes and Roe is mouthing ‘Sparky’ with a smile on his face.

<~>

It was buzzing all over the company. What else did they have to talk about on this remote planet besides what was going on between the men themselves. Speirs had come down with something awful and the Doc had locked the two of them up in one of the med stations. Quarantine protocols had gone into effect and only Nixon and Winters had any idea what was going on inside the room.

The problem had been that Winters didn’t look like a man about to loose his one doctor and company leader to some kind of deadly disease. He had looked green around the gills and slightly cagey every time one of the men had asked after their CO in that first day.

Then less than twenty four hours later the good Doctor and their Captain had emerged from the room hale and whole. So of course the guys were talking.

“What kind of illness takes less than twelves hours to cure but requires quarantine?” Wondered Skip aloud.

“Here we go.” Malarkey moaned and rolled so he was facing away from the other men in his foxhole.

“What? It’s a legitimate question Don.” Skip’s offended tone carried to the surrounding foxholes.

“We talking about what Captain Speirs came down with?” Asked Talbert from two holes away.

“No.” Malarkey.

“Yes.” Skip.

“I can think of only three disease that only take twelves hours to get over.” Palenka joined in because now it was a party.

“That’s why you’re not our medical officer.”

“Toccoa Flu, we all know its not actually real and just something we came up with to fuck with Sobel.” Palenka ticked off one finger. “Space slugs…”

“It’s not actually called Space Slugs!”

“They are slug like things from outer space and the best defense when you get them is to take salt tablets, medical names be damned.” Palenka retorts.

“Fair enough.”

“And the last one that we all know would be a Heat that gets satisfied with a bond.” Palenka’s eye brows wiggled at this.

“Oh man, don’t let Babe hear you say that. You know he’s got a protective streak when it comes to the Doc.” Skip teases.

“I can hear you!” Babe Heffron hisses from several foxholes away. “And as I have said before we are just friends.”

“Doth the lady protest too much?” Skip’s voice took on a breathy quality.

“Stop reading those damn bodice rippers on your holo, Skip, they will rot your brain.” Malarkey throws out because he knows where this is going.

It didn’t matter that everyone ended up laughing after that. The seed had been planted in words this time. Within a day everyone was sure that Doc Roe was now mated to the very terrifying Ronald Speirs.

“Some one should ask him.” Shifty offered, in full honesty.

“Shifty, you are the nicest person that has literally ever been born and under no circumstances should you ask Speirs if he is mated.” Frank Perconte cracks because this is the best way to keep their sharp shooter alive.

“I wonder if we can pay Luz to give it a try.” Pat Christensen mused aloud.

“He doesn’t have a death wish.” Percent shook his head. “The only fucker crazy enough to try something like that might be Babe and only because he will just ask Doc.”

So Babe was elected to ask his friend by the company at large.

<~>

“Hey Gene.” Babe greeted entering the aid station and looking around with nervous eyes.

“You hurt Heffron?” The Doc asked walking over to give his friend a pat down. Babe huffed, back to the full last name. Gene in professional mode.

“Nah, just wanted to see if you had gotten any chow yet.” Babe pulled out the MRE from his pocket. “I’m off the line for the day.” He shrugged, trying to sell this. The guys owed him. More than just the two packs of e-sticks he had originally been given. He was gonna demand they give him all the K rations for having to deceive his friend and be a fucking spy.

“Oh, sure.” Gene had taken the food with owlish eyes and the two had moved off to the side of the aid station where there were what might be called benches.

They sat in silence for several minutes before Roe huffed and looked at Babe like he wasn’t buying it.

“Ask.” Roe ordered.

“I think I got trench foot and…”

“Heffron.” Roe began with that tone he got when he was about to go full mother hen.

“Are you okay?” Babe asked finally seeing that he was not going to be able to go about this any other way.

“Me?” Eugene Roe had the bad manners to look shocked.

“Yeah, who else?” Babe rolled his eyes. Doc might be smart but some times he wasn’t quick on the uptake. Doc shrugged and looked a little helpless. “You have barely been sleeping Eugene.” Babe explains.

“I sleep.” Doc answers with a pout.

“And now you have gone and gotten mated in the middle of this mess.” Babe throws it out like it’s nothing, like he already knows.

He expects Doc to tense up or deny it or look shocked. He doesn’t. Doc just nods his head like this is true. Babe can see the sleep deprivation in his eyes.

“Why don’t you go lay down? Yeah?” Babe motions to one of the emergency bunks in the room. “I’ll stay here and wake you up if anyone comes running.”

“Yeah, okay.” Doc nods sleepily. “That… that sounds good.”

Babe watches him stumble off and figures it’s a victory. Sure he got the answers he came for but he also got the Doc to lay down. It’s worth it just for that.

Later when the Doc is sound asleep Captain Speirs comes in and gives Babe a withering look.

Right. He gets it. Babe raises his hands in surrender and steps out quickly. Mates. Sheesh.

<~>

There was no escaping the rumors and the talk. The entire battalion was awash with talk of Speirs and Roe, the odd couple. Some thought the pair were highly hilarious. Others were convinced that the two of them made the best pair in the whole world.

Joe didn’t care about any of that. What he cared about was the fact that now everyone wanted to talk about mating and the relevance of designations into today’s society. It meant that a few of the crueler guys from Fox and Dog had made jabs at him recently.

“Skinny fucking omega.”

It grated against his skin.

And all the while there was Webster. With his open mouth and wide eyes looking like a wet dream. Webster who just smiled and nodded when people made dirty jokes about omegas and alphas. Webster who smelled better than anything Joe had ever experienced in his life.

He didn’t need this. He had gotten though life on his wit and skills to this point. He didn’t need to be falling all over himself over some boy. Because that’s what Webster was, a boy. Joe knew the difference in their ages was small but it felt like a gulf every time Webster turned astonished wide sea blue eyes up at him, like Joe knew the secrets of the world.

What hurt the most, the thing that felt like that shrapnel really had hit a major artery in his neck, was watching Speirs and Roe have a near perfect bond and knowing that he could never have that. No matter what Joe lusted after. Now mater what Webster might smell like, two alphas couldn’t bond, the link wouldn’t establish. So Joe was left watching their Captain and Medic have a picture perfect romance while he sat their jealous like some comic book villain.

<~>

It’s a strange sensation, having another person in your head but only in a vague sense. Speirs finds he could tell any officer exactly where to find a medic at any time of day. Sometimes while out on patrol or watching the line Speirs hands will feel suddenly slick and he knows Roe is wiping blood off someone.

He could also feel a kind of loop. Speirs would feel himself get excited, in a fight or near Roe at night. Then he could feel Roe feel him. An echo of an echo that continued until he had Gene in his lap and both of them in a state of undress.

Speirs had never read those novels or watched those holos. The ones where a nearly feral alpha meets a small omega who tames them and then they have sex like rabbits. He knew some of the men liked to read them on their comms when they cycled off the line. They were cliches and based on old stereotypes.

Yet.

And yet Speirs had never felt as at home in his skin as he did now that he had to share part of his mental space with Doc Roe. The jitters he used to feel when he was having a bad day were gone. When he felt that mental unrest, the kind of noise that would often prompt him to jump out of trenches and run through enemy fire, he could feel the soothing mental presence of Gene.

That inner anxiety he felt when speaking to people, the reason he seemed to come off as such dick to others, went quiet at the mental push back from Doc.

He felt golden and limitless.

<~>

It had gone too far. He couldn’t live like this with his bunkmate threatening his every move. Liebgott blew hot and cold so often that Webster was now actually concerned he might have caught something beyond just being a complete asshole.

“What is your problem with me?” Webster snapped finally.

“Don’t know what you are talking about.” Liebgott blew smoke out of his e-stick at Webster’s face, something he knew Webster hated.

“These last couple of weeks you seem ready to fight me on anything and everything. You have a problem with everything about me.”

“I ain’t got a problem with you, Web. I got a problem with people like you.”

“People like me?” David had no idea what Liebgott was talking about. They had been part of Easy for the same amount of time. Sure this was the first time they were being put in a platoon together but they had always been friends before this.

“Alphas that got all the good genetics.” Liebgott spits out of the corner of his mouth and David is so shocked by the accusation he doesn’t even move when the other man rounds on him. “Your rich parents springing for the extras. You get the brains, the extra speed, all the benefits. Everything. All I get is the aggression because my parents couldn’t afford to get that taken out.”

They were so close now that David could taste the flavor filter Liebgott used on his e-stick. It was smoke flavored, campfire memories on his tongue. David felt a clench in his gut at the proximity. Being close wasn’t that big of a deal in the military, they had group showers and group sleeping arrangements on transport ships. The tents were designed to hold two men but often had to be used to hold four or five when supplies ran low.

David Webster had been close to Joe Liebgott a million time and none of them had felt like this.

“Joe,” His voice was strangely soft, “I’m an omega.” David confessed not sure why it was suddenly so important that the other man know.

“Fuck you.” Joe snarled, his face betraying his disbelief. David reached his hand into his shirt and pulled out his dog tags.

“I’m not lying.” He offered the removable tag to the other man. It was impossible really to tell what Joe thought about all of this. His face contorted into something closer to fury than any other emotion.

The fist came out of fucking nowhere. David had been watching Joe so intensely he had no idea how the other man managed to shift his weight and throw such a solid punch. His nose crunched. Hot iron flooded his throat and mouth.

“What the fuck Joe?” David gasped around the pain in his nose and the taste of blood on his lips. He wiped his mouth and stood back up from the crouch he had entered. He had intended to  argue or demand an explanation or something. He didn’t.

The kiss took him by surprise. Everything about it was a surprise. The long fingers framing his face like he was something delicate and important. The soft brush of Joe’s hair against his forehead. The perfect way their bodies slotted together, legs intertwined.

In comparison to the surprise the harshness of the kiss barely felt like anything. His lips already tasted of blood, what was a little more teeth?

It lasted for three breaths.

Then Joe pushed him away and David found himself stumbling. Joe stood several feet away, panting, his chest rising and falling in tempo with David’s stunned heart. David had always considered himself a thinking man. He read books on great thinkers. He tried to take in everything, every detail in life, so that he could be a better writer.

He didn’t think when he moved towards Joe. His brain didn’t control his actions, it was instinct and want powering him. Joe fought him even as their mouths slid together in a perfect kind of dance. The fingers in David’s hair were too hard. The hand at his hip was gripping so tight he would be amazed if he didn’t end up with bruises.

How had he missed this? How had all of his observations missed the heat in Joe’s eyes?

<~>

It takes nearly everything he has to pull back again to stumble away from David. The burn of it felt like that bullet that had moved across his skin. A searing kind of heat and pain that left him breathless.

Standing about a foot apart Joe watched David’s eye open slowly in an almost lazy light. Flushed red lips let out air in a soft huff and fingers blindly reached towards him.

Joe sees it all in a blinding flash of foresight. A future with David Webster. This insane kind of fever dream his mind has been ignoring for months, maybe years, now. The feel of those curls under his fingers every morning. The arguments over dumb things that Joe will start just to watch David get red in the face. A life where he gets one of the things he wants.

Then David speaks.

“I do not understand you.” David says it with a soft kind of feeling. It sounds fond. It sounds familiar.

It makes a fire boil in Joe’s blood.

“We aren’t doing this Webster.” Joe orders, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. He doesn’t want the taste gone but he needs this to end. It has to end.

The great big secret inside Joe’s heart can’t get out here. Not in the middle of battle. Not with the troops slowly starving because the shuttles can’t get close to this planet. Not with half the men injured and off the line. Joe has lived with the black hole in his chest for long enough to know the aching feeling as nothing more than background noise. He knows that if he gives in, if he lets David Webster fill that hole that Joe will loose something important, something he needs for this fight to continue.

Because the only thing between Joe’s sanity and crumpling to dust under the weight of this war is the hungry dark thing in his chest that keeps him angry. If that goes away he will be lost.

So he can’t have David.

So he won’t have David.

“But…” David looks confused. Good

“It was nothing.” Joe puts as much of a sneer into his voice as he can. “Left over combat excitement.” David’s blue eyes grow large and hurt. It’s an ice dagger to Joe’s heart.

“You know what,” David spits out the blood from his mouth, painting the ground in a crimson splash. “Fuck you Lieb.” David moves and picks up Joe’s pack. “You have been a terrible bunkmate for weeks. You are a complete asshole. You fucking punch me and then kiss me like it’s all you have ever dreamed about. Then you have the fucking balls to tell me it was nothing. I’m done. Get out. Find some other bunk.”

This is what he wanted. He tells himself that over and over again.

It doesn’t matter that he feels numb to his core. It doesn’t matter that he aches. This is what he wanted. He wanted the pain and the anger and the emptiness. It keeps him moving. Keeps his gun up. He can live with the hurt because he will be alive and so will David Webster. The rest of it is just window dressing on life.

<~>

Everyone expected now that Speirs was bonded to Roe that he would be tone down, that he wouldn’t be jumping over explosions and and running through K’waut lines. Even Winters was under the impression that it might finally make ‘Sparky’ a little bit less reckless.

They were all very very wrong.

The thing that most of Easy Company seems to forget is that when a call for a Medic goes up over the comms Doc Roe is there. It doesn’t matter about how bad of a shelling the line is taking, or the sniper fire raining down. Doc Roe will be there the moment he is needed.

The two of them combined actually have little to no self preservation instinct.

Lipton really wishes they had some alcohol on this planet. His nerves could really use a beer right now.

Today while the company was holding a line against a K’waut armor advance the Doc had stood five feet from the front line, patching up Smokey and paid no attention the the bullets missing his head by inches.

Lip had tried to get the other man to move, drag the wounded Smokey farther behind the line and to a safer distance.

“We got to move Doc!”

Then the Doc had done something that no other person could do, he had ducked a mortar that not even Lip had seen coming. Later Lip realized that Speirs had been on the line, watching the artillery. Doc Roe had ducked because Speirs had seen the shot coming. Fuck.

They were all so fucked.

On the flip side of this Speirs was now really good at applying bandages when men got hit.

<~>

The K’wauts seem to be pulling off planet. Nixon has satellite images of transport ships in orbit and shuttle craft coming down in the middle of the day when their engines wont give them away. The brass wants a prisoner grab, they need to interrogate some of the cloners to see what’s going on.

“Webster, Liebgott, we need a translator for the patrol.” Speirs says it like there is a choice.

“I’ll go sir.” Webster answers. Joe doesn’t know what emotion he is feeling right now, anger seems too small a word. “I’ve been off the line longer.” Webster continues. I

t’s true the idiot had gotten hit the other day and spent the time hiding out in the medical building. Which had suited Joe just fine, he didn’t need Webster clouding his judgment in the middle of a firefight.

“Fine. Liebgott, report to OP2. Get some rest.” Speirs walks off to consult with Winters and Nixon.

He can’t call Webster out because there are other guys here, can’t tell him how fucking stupid he is being. Instead Joe settles for something petty and childish. He winks at Webster putting a mocking into his tone as he says “Thanks Buddy.”

It hits Webster like Joe means it to. Half of him is pleased to have hurt the boy the way he meant to, the other half thinks he is an idiot that is ruining this. He tells that part of himself to shut the hell up.

<~>

Joe regrets the fight while he sits there behind the machine gun, waiting for the whistle tone to be played over their comms. He let Webster go across that fucking river without having a proper talk about this thing between them. Not that when Webster comes back alive they are going to have anything resembling a proper talk.

It’s just.

Joe has known panic and fear. He had been a paratrooper for over two years now. He knows what it is to break mentally in boot camp. He knows what it feels like to stand up when you spine feels like it’s made of paper. He had felt his own heart beat right out of his chest and still fired his gun. He has watched people he cared about like family die bloody or firey.

Still none of that has felt exactly like the sheer gripping horror that is knowing Webster might not make it back across that fucking river.

What are they actually fighting about?

Nothing. Fuck.

Joe’s pride is the only thing between him and Webster.

Joe’s misguided desire to be alone and nothing fucking else. He was such a fucking idiot.

“Blow the fucking whistle!” He hears his own voice shout. It sounds panicked and pained to his own ears.

Men are crawling back towards the boats and there hasn’t been the tone. He can’t fire. For nearly eight seconds Joe Liebgott knows the worst fear he has known this entire war.

The whistle tone sounds and his fingers don’t even get an express command from his brain, the trigger his down. He watches explosions and returns covering fire all the while thinking that he is going to absolutely RUIN Webster for scaring him like this.

<~>

Speirs sits in CP waiting. He had been on one of the guns offering covering fire until the men crossed the river. After that he had returned to his command post to wait for his reports. He knew from experience that racing over to the patrol’s OP building would do no good, they didn’t need one more man to deal with right now.

Besides Gene would tell him about anything important when he came by later in the night.

Only Gene didn’t show. Not in a time table that Ron considered appropriate. He gave a mental push to the back of his skull, a question. What he got in response what felt like wetness on his hands, a sense memory response.

Ron left CP and went in search of Gene. He found him in medical, sitting exhausted on a bunk looking at his hands. Ron could see his hands were clean, scrubbed of whatever had been on them, but Gene was in a memory right now. If Ron focused he could feel a heaving body under his own hands and then a slick slide followed by a stillness.

They had lost someone tonight.

He didn’t ask who it was, he had platoon leaders for that. Instead Ron sat down next to Gene and pulled the smaller man into his lap. Gene didn’t shake or visibly cry, he sat there limply and stared at his hands in a kind of unmoving trance.

Speirs had never been good at empathy or comforting others. The kinds of things that made him feel better never seemed to be the things that helped others. He remembers how angry his sisters used to get when he failed to be suitably angry at the injustices of men.

“I can print new limbs.” Gene spoke in a weak voice. “Toye and Guarnere are up and walking weeks after losing limbs.”

Ron remembered something his sister had once screamed at him ‘sometimes Ronald people just want to be held!’ so he placed a palm against Gene’s back and pushed a warm feeling through the connection they shared.

“We have stem cell skin patches.” Gene continued, his voice growing shaky. “Liebgott won't even scar.”

Gene inhaled in what could only be described as a shutter.

“Jackson died with my hands on him.” Ron knew there was nothing to say. “I could have pulled on the connection and calmed him. I could have calmed all of them if I had wanted to push myself, if I wanted to pass out.” There was a bite at the end of this. “They crippled us.”

“They took the thing about being an alpha or an omega magic and they cut it from us.” Gene’s voice sounded very close to sobs now. “I could have saved him. My grandmother could have saved him. The bleeding wasn’t that bad, it was the thrashing and the panic and all the men too scared to hold him down properly because he was a strong enough alpha that he was agitating all of them.”

There was nothing to say to this grief. So Ron held Gene while he tore himself apart. Hours later when Gene had completely self destructed Ron offered the building blocks to put himself back together again.

It wasn’t a simple thing being in a relationship in a place like this. It didn't come naturally and it didn’t feel normal but Ron understood that Gene was the best thing that could have ever happened to him and he had a duty to be supportive.

In the morning nothing was really solved and the war wasn’t over but Ron and Gene would be okay, they would survive anything, together.

<~>

Joe doesn’t go find Webster right away. He stays where he is bunked and spends the rest of the grey hours of morning working himself up to this. He goes over things he means to say. He tries not to bloody his knuckles on a wall or against his own legs.

He makes it until he sees the very beginnings of dawn. A slight pink light in the sky and he is out of the building and off in search of where Webster and the other men on the patrol spent the night.

Joe nearly runs over Speirs in his haste.

“Sorry Captain.” Joe offers quickly because he doesn’t really want to be alone with Speirs, the strongest alpha in Easy and one angry mother fucker to begin with, right now when he is worked up.

“Liebgott.” Speirs snaps before Joe can get very far, maybe a few steps. Joe pivots his, gut clenched and ready for some kind of reprimand. However, Speirs pulls something out of one of his pockets and throws it at Joe.

It’s a small tube. Joe’s face must show the confusion and suspicion he feels because Speirs squints at him like he thinks Joe is going to question the gift.

“See Doc afterwards.” Speirs orders and marches off.

Fuck.

Stupid fucking mated pairs.

Joe pushes it from his mind and continues on his hunt for Webster, now with the added benefit of lube.

<~>

The day off. What a wild concept. Webster isn’t sure he knows what to do with himself. Not with Jackson’s dead hanging so close to his head.

He expected to find his bunk empty. There were enough buildings here that everyone could mostly get a room with only one other person. Webster had been alone since Liebgott took his pack and went to room with Alley and McLung.

It was empty of course but the silent stillness seemed wrong to him now after the hours of panicked waiting, the loud silence of the patrol, the gun fire, Jackson’s cries, and the heavy thick sound of a dozen men with nothing to say.

The room wasn’t empty for long. Webster was staring at his bunk when Liebgott came up behind him and pushed him into the room. He knew it was Liebgott without either of them speaking. He would know Liebgott blindfolded and dizzy. He could smell the other man in a way no one else ever could. Webster had the shape of Liebgott’s fingers burned into his sense memory so deep he would remember those hands on his death bed, in old age, in a century.

“Joe?” David asks. But what he means is _what are you doing here_ and _why can’t you just act in a way I can expect_ and _don’t you dare leave again_.

“You get hit?” Joe asks barreling right past David and patting him down.

“What?” His brain is struggling with this. It’s not what he was expecting. It never is with Joe, but this is even more unexpected.

“You hit, Web?” Joe snaps. David shakes his head feeling like he is a child being scolded. Some of the tension goes out of his shoulders. “Good because I would have killed you if you were hurt.” The words are cruel. The voice is soft and shaky.

For the first time during this entire interaction David looks Joe squarely in the face. Joe looks raw and terrified. All the armor that normally stands between Joseph Liebgott and the world is gone and David can see his soul.

It’s an apology and a confession. David at least has the brains to realize that.

The kiss is everything. The kiss is months of this back and forth. The kiss is fingers gripped into hair and necks and hips and a complete lack of oxygen in the face of this.

This powerful thing between them.

When David had dreamed of this or allowed himself to dream of it his thought were always of something quick, pants pulled off with speed and hands almost violent. There is a speed here but it doesn't feel like it did in his dreams. There is no anger behind the tug of his jacket or the clank of belt buckles. Instead there is something like desperations and fear in each trembling touch.

They are naked faster than he realizes and everything suddenly feels like too much. David breaks their mouths apart and steps back to sit on his bunk. The metal is cold against his bare legs and he find that looking up a Joe’s hungry eyes negates the cold.

“Don’t scare me like that again.” Joe commands before dropping to his knees and pulling David into his mouth.

<~>

Maybe they should talk about this. Maybe Joe should stop what he is doing and actually express the fear and devotion he feels.

But Joe isn’t a man of words. Not really. Not when they mean something. What he is, is a man of action. So he shows stupid, beautiful David Webster what he thinks with his hands and his mouth and his body.

“Lieb.” David gasps.

Dear.

Joe removes his mouth and climbs up to the bunk and pushed David over with a soft shove. He goes willingly. It seems almost comical how easy this is between the two of them. David relaxed and panting with Joe steady and wanting. The arguments are gone and nothing is left but that perfect compatibility they have both felt for months.

Joe pauses and gets off the bunk to find his pants. Fucking Speirs is going to get a god damn gift basket when this war is over.

“Where did you find that?” David asks incredulous and pleased when Joe climb back on top of him with tube in hand.

“It’s a secret.” Joe whispers into David’s mouth as his fingers get to work. They barely get two fingers in before David turns back into the demanding know-it-all he is at his core.

“I’m ready.” He urges.

“No.” Joe is going to make this good, perfect even. Because if he only gets this one chance, this one time to show David Webster how he feels then is going to make it perfect for him. Joe bites at David as the other man attempts to make some other kind of complaint, shoulder, hips, nipples.

Only when David is a mess under him does Joe replace his fingers.

“Fuck!” David practically shouts.

“Jesus Christ David,” Joe gasps trying to move a hand to cover the other’s mouth. “Keep it down. Fuck.”

David laughs at that. The fucker. Joe is in him to the root and he has the gall to laugh now. Joe’s face must speak to some of what he has thought because David reaches up and kisses him around a smile.

It taste like sunshine and the sea in the early morning.

“I love you.”

Fuck.

He actually said that.

Web doesn’t even look surprised. He just kisses Joe harder. Shit. Fuck.

They move faster. His hand feel like they might be cramping from the grip he has on the back of David’s neck. The muscles in his lower back scream at the angle and pace they have set. It doesn’t matter. The pain and discomfort feel like nothing next to the look on David Webster’s face as he comes. Joe follows him over the cliff in seconds.

He is so fucked.

<~>

They lay there panting and David finally lets himself really understand that this is real and it happened.

“We are going to mate.” He tells Joe.

Joe’s face looks panicked. It makes David want to laugh but he doesn’t because he wants the other man to understand he is serious.

“Not today, mind you. I just though I would say it now so you can spend the next two years freaking out about it before we do actually get mated.” David explains. Joe narrows his eyes at him. “Unless you think it will take longer for you to come to terms with mating than it did for you to come to terms with us being a thing. I can wait three years.”

“You are lucky you are cute.” Joe huffs in an annoyed voice. David counts that as a yes.

“I love you too.”

<~>

“Pay up losers!” Perconte demands the next day when Webster and Liebgott go off to talk to the Doc with sheepish smiles.

Luz throws his e-stick rations right at Perconte’s face. Frank catches it with a smile.

“I should get shot in the ass more often. Makes me right about things.” Frank grins at the assembled group.

“Bull, smack him for me?” Luz replies.

It’s barely a smack but Bull is a big guy. “Ow!”

“Thank you.”

<~>

The war was over. The shuttles had come days ago and everyone was back on the transport ship headed home. There was alcohol and parties all over the ship and yet Gene found Ron sitting alone in his bunk looking sullen.

“I thought you were drinking with the other officers.” Gene offers because he doesn’t know exactly how to place what he see’s on Ron’s face. He had come because the connection had tingled in a way it never had before. At first he thought it was the alcohol, now he knew it was something else as well.

“If you could pick…” Ron started and then paused, his teeth clenched. Gene could feel his mate holding back.

Maybe before that dumb winter planet Gene wouldn’t have known exactly what Ron was asking. Back when they were still Speirs and Doc Roe. Now he could tell because he knew this man. He could see eyes at his mating bite, read the pain in Ron’s eyes, and feel the doubt echo in the back of his mind

“You.” Ron’s eyes snapped up sharply like he had not been expecting that response. “If I got to choose, if we hadn’t been at war and time wasn’t an issue, I would still want you.” Ron opened his mouth “And not just because we are a mutual lock.”

“I wanted you back when we barely spoke.” Ron replied. “Didn’t think it would happen. Not this way, not ever.” The romantic. Of course Ron was wishing they had dated before this or spent time together outside of war, like they didn’t have time.

“Ron,” Gene smiled softly. “Your soft side is showing. People might notice.”

Gene felt Ron’s smile even as he saw it. Felt the joy and the love and yes some of the alcohol in that smile.

“Now, come help me cheat Luz out of all of his credits at poker.” Gene smiled at the truly devious excitement Ron felt at that offer. “You can use the winnings to take me out when we get back planet side.”

**Author's Note:**

> [Come hang out with me on Tumblr. The more you talk to me the more I write. ](http://alyseofwonderland.tumblr.com/)
> 
>  
> 
> Also did anyone notice that I gave Chuck Grant two moms or was that not clear?
> 
> If you have already kudos and/or commented consider reblogging the posts on Tumblr that include the graphics.
> 
> [Main Post](http://alyseofwonderland.tumblr.com/post/162055454578/heat-jump-by-alyseofwonderland-the-army-has-the)
> 
>    
> [Speirs/Roe specific edit](http://alyseofwonderland.tumblr.com/post/162065691116/heat-jump-by-alyseofwonderland-alphas-speirs)
> 
> [Webgott specific edit](http://alyseofwonderland.tumblr.com/post/162762703333/heat-jump-by-alyseofwonderland-ive-was-reading)
> 
> [Speirs only edit ](http://alyseofwonderland.tumblr.com/post/162335941944/heat-jump-by-alyseofwonderland-lieutenant)
> 
> [Roe only edit](http://alyseofwonderland.tumblr.com/post/162097330010/heat-jump-by-alyseofwonderland-his-feet-touched)


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